Super Mario Bros. 2

Before Nintendo shipped Super Mario Bros. 2, the game was originally going to include a gray Shy Guy. Its description in the manual notes that the enemy “moves slowly but he’ll persistently chase after the player if he sees them.” We don’t know why the gray Shy Guy was removed, though it was seemingly done at the last minute.

This same enemy is now being rediscovered with the help of Game Genie. Twitter user bmf54123 came up with the codes XTXPLIKO XTXPGIYK AANPEXAA ZEVNIGPA to have the gray Shy Guy appear in Super Mario Bros. 2. Destructoid apparently had issues, but was able to get things working with the alternate codes XTXOAIYK XTXPYIKO AANPKXAA ZEVNIGPA.

Nintendo’s Kensuke Tanabe addressed this while speaking with USgamer at E3 last week, in which he stated:

“Super Mario Bros. 2, as you know, when we created that game in Japan, it didn’t have Mario as the main character Probably because of that, it’s been overlooked for Super Mario Maker. I didn’t talk to Mr. (Takashi) Tezuka at all about it, actually. It does seem sort of unfortunate.”

Tanabe did give a bit of hope for the future, as he seemed to show some interest in something like a Super Mario Bros. 2-style version of Mario Maker. “If I ever have the chance, yes, it would be interesting to work on something like that,” he said.

The Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 almost made it to North America through a Nintendo Power giveaway, author Jon Irwin reveals in an upcoming book. Gail Tilden, former vice president of brand management at Nintendo of America and one of Nintendo Power’s founding editors, divulged to Irwin that she led a campaign that would allow subscribers to obtain a copy.

“We weren’t doing anything with it! [So] I worked up with my Nintendo Power agency a campaign called ‘The Lost Levels,’” Tilden said.